FAQ

Do I need to code to be able to participate?

No, there are many ways to contribute that do not require programming skills. Specifically, the Ethics Challenge Proposal stream of the competition will not require any programming, and will be a significant portion of the evaluation.

The competition will take place at the ICRA conference in Philadelphia, US. Do I have to be there in person?

No. The competition will be run as a hybrid event. You can participate online, wherever you are.

Do I have to register to the ICRA conference to participate?

• If you'd like to join our hackathon event in person, you will need to register through the ICRA registration page to pick up your conference entrance pass. But you only need a Competitions Access Only Registration to enter, instead of the full Conference Registration. Fill out the Sign-up for Hackathon form and let us know if you'd like us to send you free Competitions Access Only Registration pass to ICRA.

• If you'd like to participate in either/both the ethics challenge or the hackathon, you do not need to register through ICRA. However, note that virtual attendance to ICRA is free.

The ICRA registration page asks for things like IEEE Members, Non-Member etc., and does not have Competitions Access Only Registration as an option. What do I do?

If you do not have IEEE membership, or know what this all means, don't worry. You can select "Non-member" and the subsequent pages of the ICRA registration page will have the "Competitions Access Only Registration" listed.

What languages / frameworks will the hackathon use?

The robots will be implemented in Processing--a sketching library and language based on Java. If you know Java or any other object oriented language with strict typing such as C# or C++, it should be very easy to pick up! 

What is the specific programming task that the hackathon team will do?

The hackathon team will be given a scenario, along with a list of interactable objects, agents (e.g. humans), and environment (e.g. apartment). They will be asked to program a virtual robot in Processing that can bring objects to agents or places. However, some fetch requests may have ethical challenges. The hackathon team can choose to implement a solution from the Proposal team to address this ethics issue. The specific settings will be given to hackathon teams in the week preceding ICRA 2022.

What is the timeline of events?

This can be found on the timeline section of the home page.